BDES1020 Continuous city <Jae Yeon Kim>

Abstract

This is a Contemporary Art Gallery in Dam Square which is in Amsterdam. Dam square is a transportation hub for the city as well as an important tourist zone. So I thought it would be appropriate to have a public building where most people can enjoy. This building is consist of two wings of exhibition block and one central block. There is a main street laying on northwest corner of the gallery so I put the entrance at the corner not on the front façade. On the ground floor I put all the secondary spaces at the back so it does not block the access to the exhibition room. Most of the ground floor is a big open void. It will be used as an indoor market which sells young designer’s works. Sometimes it will be used as a space for a huge scaled art works to be sitted. On the upper level there are two exhibition rooms and a café near the front façade. From the café people can have a view of Amsterdam so they can feel that they are actually in Amsterdam. In my original design, there were no slope at the roof and all the roofs had the same heights, but I accented the heights of the exhibition blocks so the function can be emphasized. At first, I had no windows in the exhibition rooms to preserve the art works. But I thought some art exhibition may need natural light so for one of the exhibition rooms I made a slope upward to south and small slab around it so let a small amount of sun light flow in. I regarded interacting with the outside on the street as a important factor. That’s why I used glass as a material. Transparent wall eliminates the barriers between the outside and inside to let the building communicate with the street. For the both side of the wings I have decided to clad them with wood. One reason that I used wood is as buildings around Dam square are all traditional brick building so there is no modern architecture. So I thought wood will be best blended into the surrounding harmoniously rather than steel or metallic construction. Also, I wanted people to feel comfortable when they look at the gallery. In that point, wood would be the most sympathetic of all building materials as it is a natural material as well as it has been used for architecture for a long time.